Sherlockian author Charlotte Anne Walters asked an interesting question on her blog this week: Is the media market saturated with Holmes, or is there room for more? Everyone should hop over to her blog and take her pollon the subject.

Since I’m shameless that way, I’m going to borrow her topic. Charlotte brought up the still-untapped market of mainstream viewers who haven’t yet discovered Holmes, which is a very valid point. I’m going to go at it from a different angle.

For better or worse, the most recent Holmesian wave primarily owes its existence to the Big Three: The Guy Ritchie films, Sherlock, and Elementary. As a result of these three things individually and in different combinations, literal millions have suddenly joined a fandom that was alive and well before, but admittedly very much a niche interest.

Do I think the market is saturated? No, I don’t. I think it’s just about ready for a new, faithful, serious, Victorian adaptation to hit the English-speaking world. Now, before I lose my hearing from all the voices yelling at me that the Granada Holmes adaptations are what I’m talking about, I’m not disagreeing. However, as great as those were and are, there’s a large segment of the Holmesian fandom who simply isn’t going to go back to something that ended before they were born. And if they do, they will still have room for something new.

That’s the nature of visual media. I watch the Christopher Reeve Superman films or the original Stark Trek movies, but that doesn’t meant I have no room for new adaptations. Even brilliant franchises can handle a quality reboot every two decades, which is what we’re coming up on.

Much has been made of the fact that TV has led a new generation of fans toward the Holmes canon. I believe it’s coming up on time for those fans to see that canon find new life on screen, a life that is not only faithful to the stories in spirit (as Sherlock so brilliantly is), but also faithful to the time and place of Doyle’s world.